Question

　　Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language, but few people are even just a little skilled at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the important reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do is that fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and as a result never set about dealing with it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is skill, one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be reached just leaving it to take care of itself. I think even teachers of language, while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to take no notice of, in their practical teaching, the branch of study concerned with speaking the language. So, the first point I want to make is that English pronunciation must be taught; the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to this and his whole attitude to the subject should get the student to feel that here is matter worthy of receiving his close attention. So, there should be time when other aspects（方面）of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place.

　　Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge; the second, technique.

　　It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be learned from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic（语言）theory. It is also possible in this may to get a clear. mental picture of the relationship between the sounds of different languages, between the speech habits of English people and those, say, of your students. Unless the teacher has such a picture, any comments he may make on his students' pronunciation are unlikely to be of much use, and lesson time spent on pronunciation may well be time-wasted.

(1) According to the passage, ________ pronouncing foreign languages.

[　　]

A．few people are extremely good at

B．even modern people are not good at

C．only few people are somewhat good at

D．few people are at the average level in

(2) According to the author, pronunciation is a skill that can NOT be ________.

[　　]

A．picked up without conscious training

B．trained consciously

C．be taught

D．be carefully trained

(3) In the author's opinion, ________.

[　　]

A．grammar is less important than pronunciation

B．grammar and spelling should always make room for pronunciation

C．grammar and spelling are sometimes less important than pronunciation

D．grammar is more important than spelling

Answer 1

答案：C;A;C
解析：

(1)根据第一段第二句“…but few people are even just a little skilled at pronouncing…”来判断，A、B项内容很显然是不正确的。C、D项中，必须分别正确理解somewhat和at the average level的含义。somewhat在此处是“a little”的意思，和原文一样，而不是平均(average)的意思。所以答案是C。 (2)此题即使学生不认识conscious（有意识的），答案也较易选出，因为B、C、D选项明显违背常识，而且也与文章不符，所以只能选A项。A项的意思是：发音是一项不经过有意识训练不可能掌握的技能。 (3)此题答案的依据可从第一段最后一句中推断出。